Investigative Psychology

Abstract

Investigative psychology seeks to improve our understanding of criminal behavior and the investigative process. It emerged in response to early experiential approaches to offender profiling and a desire to formulate an alternative, empirical method of supporting police investigations ( Canter, 2000 ). From the beginning, investigative psychology distinguished itself from other forms of profiling by relying on the systematic exploration of how offenders and investigators behaved during their offenses and investigations. This empirical approach led researchers to utilize novel data on offenders’ behavior (e.g., derived from case files) and to develop new ways of analyzing this “real-world” data. It also required theoretical developments, such as a specification of the conditions necessary to allow accurate inferences from snapshots of offender behavior. This historical background and the unique conceptual contributions of investigative psychology are discussed in the first two sections of this chapter.